Google demos VR advertising

Researchers at Area 120, Google’s experimental unit, have revealed in a blog post that they’ve built their first version of a digital advertising format designed specifically for mobile, virtual-reality applications.

The demonstration video, shared by Google product manager Aayush Upadhyay and associate project manager Neel Rao, showed a cube adorned with logos (which will presumably alter to match the company behind the advertised product) floating inside a VR app that can be clicked on, or stared at long enough, to trigger a small screen that plays a video ad.

“Our work focuses on a few key principles – VR ad formats should be easy for developers to implement… and useful and non-intrusive for users,” the research pair said in the post.

Area 120 has released an early stage software developer kit for use in building VR apps, the post added.